TStaying away from the rhetoric or personalization of pain is not easy in general, and in particular when the pain you choose to face is your own. Mario Natangelo succeeds in this undertaking: journalist, born in 1985, born in Naples and resident in Rome, he has published Ash. Notes from a bereavement (140 comic pages, Rizzoli, €24) after losing his mother. Considered the most caustic satirical cartoonist around (draw for Daily fact and has twice received the Forte dei Marmi International Prize for Political Satire), has put his witty pencil at the service of this book which it is also a comic, as well as an operation of great tenderness. Rhetoric, which is always lurking, steps aside here, giving way to the truth and beauty of the story.
“Ash. Notes from a bereavement”, the cartoonist Natangelo talks about the loss of his mother. With tenderness
«The drawing has the graceful trait of reducing, of attenuating, in contrast with the violence of the loss», writes Erri De Luca in the preface. And it is also true that the two greatest sorrows that await us in life are the deaths of our parents: it is a truth that belongs to us, to one of the tables of Ash and to Natangelo. We asked him to share more.
How did you lose your mother?
«Mum died after suffering a lot and for a long time. She died one piece at a time and in the book I ask myself whether it would be better to leave like this or suddenly but with less suffering. It’s a silly question, I realize. But I discovered that when faced with severe pain, one regresses to a kind of emotional childhood: things suddenly become simple, bordering on the banal. A lot of senseless questions – “how is it better to die?” – they make sense and I myself reasoned about them for hours with my father and my sister, as if we were Hegel and Spinoza. A lot of clichés – “only those who have been there can understand” – become true. Before my mother I had other bereavements and losses, of course. But mother is the door through which we enter this world, with her that door closes forever. It is a change of state, not a simple mourning.”
How to overcome bereavement
If you had to explain how to overcome bereavement, what would you put in the top three places on a priority list?
«Time, time and time. This is why it is a fundamental element of my book, with a constantly updated timetable above each chapter. Only time heals everything (another obvious fact). It must pass, very slowly. At first in that time you won’t be able to do anything about it, except feel it pass and measure it. Then little by little you start to live in it, to put things in it. To put new people and feelings in it. The heart, in this, is an extraordinary power: what seemed like a feeble scooter suddenly has the strength and propulsion of a jet. You have to give yourself time and above all, in these times when slowing down means missing opportunities, accept that you need time: another banal phrase but one that becomes concrete and precise.”
The cartoonist Mario Natangelo, born in Naples in 1985.
Ashdraw tables to “dismantle” mourning
Why did you write Cenere?
«The book was actually born from some snapshots, tables that I drew and put online in the immediate moments of mourning. I photographed emotions in a precise moment, the moment they happened: time passed, I told the story. Then I reworked everything, told other forgotten things, I also told the story: and so it was born Ash».
«Ash it is a way to dismantle the mourning and it is for me, for my family. And it’s for anyone who is healing this pain. People think that the satirical cartoonist only has a desecrating or comical soul but this is not the case. But while perhaps Altan created the Pimpa for his little daughter, it fell to me Ash for my dead mother. She’s bad luck. Maybe in a few years I’ll be better off and I’ll be able to create a Pimpa.”
«Transforming loss into a fairy tale with a sad name but a happy ending»
Who helped you the most in the grieving process?
«Another rhetorical but true phrase: drawing. Ash he saved me. She made me take apart my pain, she made me play with it. She made me laugh. The story saved me, but not the story itself. The fact of telling others, to those who have read Ash in the first pages published online and to those who will read the book now and write to me. I have been drawing and publishing my works for fifteen years, the power of the channel that opened this story is unprecedented. So I can say that it saved me to draw that otherwise unspeakable pain for others. Build a story and transform it into a fairy tale with a sad name but a happy ending.”
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